Trump's convention invokes fear against Biden

Washington

PRESIDENT Donald Trump's convention opened with a dark portrait of fear in America painted largely for the benefit of his base - mixing appeals to Black and Latino voters with warnings of "mobs" bent on destroying the status quo.

Monday's Republican convention programming offered few appeals for independent voters disenchanted by Mr Trump. Instead, it stitched together a series of tributes to Mr Trump himself, leaned heavily on accusations that Democrats would damage the very fabric of American society and offered a revisionist vision of his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which now threatens his re-election chances.

Promises that the convention would present an optimistic vision of the next four years quickly gave way to dire warnings of a Joe Biden-led America, branding the Democratic nominee both as a radical and a failure, despite a 40-plus-year record in the US Senate and the vice-president's office as a moderate Democrat.

Speakers warned of rioters besieging the nation - referring in part to protests for racial justice after several high-profile killings of Black people - and of higher taxes and socialist upheavals if Mr Trump loses.

"They want to destroy this country and everything we hold dear," Kimberly Guilfoyle, a Trump campaign aide and girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr, said, at times raising her voice to a shout. "They want to steal your liberty, your freedom. They want to control what you see and think and believe, so they can control how you live! They want to enslave you to the weak, dependent, liberal victim ideology, to the point that you will not recognise this country or yourself." Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said Mr Biden would forever change American culture. "Our side is working on policy - while Joe Biden's radical Democrats are trying to permanently transform what it means to be an American. Make no mistake: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want a cultural revolution, a fundamentally different America," Mr Scott said of the Democratic ticket.

Mr Trump is looking to the convention to spark a rebound in support and close the gap with Mr Biden, who is leading nationally and in swing states that will decide the presidency. The Democratic convention last week aimed squarely at Mr Trump, wooing support from progressives and Republicans alike with the singular goal of ousting him.

But the strategy Mr Trump's team put on display on Monday carries enormous risks for the president's chances of re-election. He won in 2016 by the thinnest of margins - 80,000 votes in three states. With so little outreach to new voters, Mr Trump is forced to rely on the same coalition to return him to the White House, even as polls show some of his supporters from last time have abandoned him.

Mr Trump's convention did go after some of the Democrats' most loyal voters, including teachers' unions and African Americans. Many of the remarks directly addressed Mr Trump, who appeared in parts of the convention throughout the day and tweeted out clips of the event into the night. This year's convention ditched a formal platform and instead pledged loyalty to Mr Trump.

There was almost no talk of what he would do with a second term, and the president himself has not laid out a detailed agenda, beyond talking about restoring the economy to its pre-Covid-19 heights, with few specifics as to how he would achieve that.

Monday's convention delivered a selective retelling of the handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which Mr Trump regularly minimised. It touted his restriction on flights from China and his spurring of manufacturing of medical equipment, glossing over delays in responding to the virus and weeks of downplaying its footprint, spread and scope.

Mr Trump said Democrats were trying to take advantage of the pandemic in a renewed attack on vote by mail. "What they're doing is using Covid to steal an election," Mr Trump said earlier in the day after he was nominated for a second term by delegates in Charlotte, North Carolina. "They're using Covid to defraud the American people, all of our people, of a fair and free election. We can't do that."

Mr Biden leads Mr Trump nationally among Black voters, 87 per cent to 9 per cent, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll. Mr Biden's support is consistent with Hillary Clinton's in 2016.

But Black voters also failed to turn out for Mrs Clinton in the same numbers as in 2012, when then president Barack Obama was on the ballot. Then, Black turnout reached an all-time high of 66.6 per cent, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. In 2016 it dropped to 59.6 per cent.

Even a small shift in the Black vote could have big consequences for Mr Biden, because of large Black voting populations in key swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida, where Mr Trump's support among Black voters is in the single-digits but where margins could be razor-thin. For Mr Trump, winning over Black voters or spurring undecided ones to stay home could prove decisive.

The convention continues on Tuesday, featuring Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and first lady Melania Trump. BLOOMBERG